A Heap of Broken Images
by Solstice Zero
Summary: When Jack is sent back to the past by a mysterious but all too familiar creature, it is up to Ianto, Gwen and Martha to bring him back. Whatever you do, don't blink. Now Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:**__ This story is going to be about four chapters long **(edit: lies, six)**, which is, I think, a goodish length for my first multichaptered fanfic. I should have them all up over the course of the next week and a half. It takes place after "Exit Wounds" and the season finale of Doctor Who season 4, but obviously before CoE. This really kind of requires you to have seen the tenth episode of the third series of Doctor Who, "Blink". Much of it will be lost on you otherwise.  
P.S. Title comes from "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot._

_

* * *

  
_

Jack swiveled his body around, his torchlight sweeping over damp, rotting wallpaper. "Who's there?" His voice carried through the empty house. "If it's rats, I'll scream," he added with a smile, listening for another sound. Hearing nothing, he moved on, into the next room. Outside, the wind moaned and around him the abandoned house seemed to lean, like it was just about to tip over. This worried him vaguely, but the rift activity detector in his pocket was still beeping its subdued staccato, and really, if the house fell on him, what damage could it do?

Another sound. Like the first, a sort of shuffling. He spun, drawing his gun and holding it below the torch. "Show yourself!"

He waited. There was nothing. Brow creased, he holstered his gun and turned back around.

The torch tumbled to the ground with a _crack_ and rolled a few feet away. It lit a rotting table leg, a warped, broken saucer, something stone, but no Jack Harkness.

The room was empty but for the light. And then, with a few shuddering flashes, the light went out.

- - -

"Ianto, do you know where Jack is?"

Ianto had to juggle the four coffees and bag of pastries he was carrying to tap the comm in his ear. As a result, his reply was rather cross. "Are you under the impression that I have him tagged, Gwen?"

He was walking across the Plass toward the Tourist Center. He was late, so it was just as well that Jack wasn't in the hub. Not that he'd have had much to say on the matter.

"Well, aren't we chipper this morning? Are you almost in?"

"Opening the door now," he said, with effort, again trying to juggle the drinks and open the door without dropping anything.

"See you in a minute, then."

He got inside and set the bag down, tapping off the comm and hanging his coat and keys up. Jack's keys, he noticed, were gone. He took the bag and drinks and pressed open the hidden door, then went off down the hall.

As the cog door rolled back to let him through, Martha was just coming out of the medical bay. When she caught sight of Ianto, she made a beeline for him and he offered out one of the coffees.

"Oh, brilliant," she said, accepting it with both gloved hands. "You have no idea how much I need this right now."

"Rough morning?" he asked, depositing the other food on the table in front of the sofa.

"That body we picked up last night is a lot more complicated than it looks." She looked back toward the medical bay with an expression of dread. "It'll probably take me all day to figure out how it worked when it was alive, never mind what killed it."

Ianto glanced toward Jack's office. "So Jack isn't here?"

Gwen said from behind him, "Oh, _now_ you're interested?"

He turned. "Yes, now that my hands aren't full of your breakfast." He gestured at the table. She looked, then descended upon the pastries, all-forgiven.

"You're welcome," he said, with humor.

"Gwen says Jack _sleeps_ here," Martha said, sitting on the sofa. "Couldn't he have found a flat or something? He doesn't have to guard the place."

Ianto, his face pinking very slightly with the image of Jack's toothbrush sitting in Ianto's bathroom at that very second, busied himself by going into Jack's office and peering down into Jack's quarters. (Jack liked to call it his Manhole. Ianto didn't think there were enough muscles in his face to sustain the eyeroll that name deserved.)

"We've checked," Gwen called, "he's not there."

Ianto came back out. "He'll show up," he said simply, moving for the stairs. "He's a big boy."

"As you're well aware!"

"See if I bring you breakfast again!" Ianto called back, rolling back the door and leaving.

- - -

When, at noon, Jack still hadn't returned from wherever he was, Gwen called Ianto up in the Tourist Center. "Have you heard from Jack yet?"

"Would've told you if I had." His forehead creased and he tapped a pen against the desk. "I'll check the CCTV from last night. See when he left."

"All right. Call if you find anything." She sounded worried. It wasn't helping.

"Will do," he said, then tapped off and turned to the computer screen to pull up the CCTV feeds. He ran them back twelve hours.

He sped through it, watching as he, Martha, Gwen and Jack came in, carrying the bulbous alien body that Martha was currently working on downstairs. After that, Martha leaving, then Gwen leaving, then some interesting footage in the hot house that Ianto would have to delete when Jack could give his electronic signature. Then Ianto leaving, and nothing for a few hours. Jack wandering around, Jack working at his desk, Jack trying to use the coffee machine (Ianto would be having words). Finally, at 2am, the rift activity alarm went off, and Ianto watched as Jack pinpointed the location on a workstation (_Tosh's workstation_) and left with a sweep of his coat.

Ianto sped the footage faster. 3am, 4am, 5am, 6am, 7am and Gwen showed up. Jack hadn't come back to the hub at all from that alarm. He tapped his comm. "Gwen, can you find out where the last location of rift activity was?"

"Sure," there was a pause. Then, "The last place recorded was where we found Martha's new friend."

Ianto frowned. "That's impossible. Check again."

He heard typing. A pause. "No, nothing. That's the last place. Why, Ianto? What's going on?"

"Jack went out for an alarm last night at two. The computer should have saved the location automatically."

"Well, it didn't."

Ianto sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you think there's any way we can get that information back?"

"We can try. I'm not great with this technology, you know that Tosh-" Gwen went quiet.

Ianto shook his head. "It's fine. We've got to try anyway." He peered at the screen. "I think Jack's in trouble."

- - -

Ianto was already undoing his tie as he pushed through his front door. His eyes ached from staring at a computer screen for the last ten hours. His hands hurt from typing. A headache radiated from the back of his skull to the bridge of his nose and back again. He hung his coat up and moved into the kitchen, draping his suit jacket and tie over the back of a chair and running a glass of water. He shook a few small white pills into his hand and tossed them into his mouth, followed by the water. Then he leaned his forehead against the hanging cabinets and breathed out.

They'd made no progress. The information didn't seem to have been tampered with, or maliciously wiped at all. It looked like a system error. An incredibly effective system error. Ianto knew that if Tosh were there, it would have taken her seconds to reestablish the files, but he, Gwen and Martha were useless in that area. Jack might have been able to find it, but, there you go.

Ianto filled his kettle and turned it on, then went for his tea things. It wasn't, he thought, so much the fact that Jack was missing. He'd been missing before. He'd always turned up at some point. He couldn't die, so there wasn't much to worry about in that respect. It was the matter of how long he might be gone. Ianto again thought of Jack's toothbrush in his bathroom.

They had become quite domestic. They didn't talk about it. Ianto thought that this could be a good thing or a bad thing, but truthfully he chose not to think much about it at all, because it made his head hurt. Ianto's shirts in Jack's drawers, Jack's toothbrush in Ianto's bathroom; it was like a trade. Space for space, moving from one place to the other and back again.

Ianto thought, pouring the now-boiling water into his cup, that he might like domestic.

But now, Jack was missing again. And Ianto had seen it on Martha's face today, too: what if it was with the Doctor again? That tended to be where Jack ended up when he was gone. And then he came back with stories that he couldn't tell. "Timelines," he'd say, or no excuse at all. Only that he couldn't say. Martha'd never said how she met Jack, and Ianto knew that she probably never would.

He took his tea down the hall with him, toward the bedroom, prepared to sleep in his suit if taking it off proved to be too difficult. He had his hand on the doorknob when out of the corner of his eye he saw a square of white lying on his doormat. How, he wondered, had he missed that?

He set his tea on the squat table by his front door and picked the object up. It was an envelope; it felt old and brittle between his fingers. On it was embossed a calligraphic Torchwood "T". He carefully unsealed the wax that held the flap closed and pulled out two folded sheets of yellowed paper.

He shook them open and began to read.

Then he fumbled for his mobile and dialed Gwen's number. She answered with a sleepy curse but he ignored her.

"I found Jack," he said.

She sounded more alert as she asked, "Where?"

Ianto paused to look at the date on the letter.

"1913."


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note:** So I had to change the year Jack's in from 1830 to 1913. Why, you ask? Well, because the Torchwood Institute didn't exist until 1879. Smart one, I am. I should always look these things up first. 1913 works better for my purpose, though, so all is well. Time travel, by the by, is really difficult to plan out for this show. This chapter turned out much longer than I had intended - and does not include everything that I wanted to have in it - so there might be more than four chapters. We'll see how it works out. Sorry it's so long, if that's a problem. Used to writing 4-5,000 word chapters. More soon, promise. Thanks for the reviews and Story Alert +'s. Flinch-Hayward and marajade963 are my new favorite people. Enjoy._

_**Disclaimer**: Since I am using words taken directly from Doctor Who, I will include a disclaimer. Doctor Who and Torchwood belong to the BBC. The parts quoted from "Blink" were written by Steven Moffat._

_

* * *

  
_

_7 October 1913_

_Senghenydd__, Glamorgan, South Wales_

_Ianto,_

_This is why I should never leave the hub. I hope that you get this before I've been gone for too long, a few hours at most. I have this set up to be delivered automatically to you, care of Torchwood. I always wondered why there were some parts of the archives that I didn't have access to. _

_As you can see, I'm in 1913. Given the randomness of the date and location (Senghenydd? Really?) I can give you a rough guess of what happened. Knowing you, you've checked the CCTV feeds from last night and know that I left at 2am for a rift alarm. It looked small, so I didn't expect anything terrible to happen. Yeah, forgive me for that. The location was an abandoned house outside of Cardiff. I'll included the address on the back of this letter. The computer should have saved it, but you never know. _

_I didn't see what attacked me (if "attack" is the right word; all it did was touch me), but I can guess that it was a Weeping Angel. You'll like them. Very poetic race. Also incredibly dangerous, but if you're careful then this should be relatively easy. The Angels kill by sending a person back to a random point in the past and consuming the time that they would have used in the present. Very abstract. Almost pretentious, really._

_The thing is, when you see them, they look like statues. They're quantum locked, so that whenever anyone sets eyes on them, they turn to stone and can't move until you look away. At that point, though, they're fast. Incredibly fast. _

_The one that got me must have a hell of a stomach ache right now. I have an infinite amount of time energy. At least, I've been led to believe that I have an infinite amount of time energy. Immortality and all. That means it probably won't be after anyone else, so there won't be more disappearances, unless there's more than one, which I doubt._

_There is one problem, though. There's a pretty good chance that if you catch this Angel and lock it into stone forever, the same thing will happen to me in 1913. Right now that Angel and I are sharing the energy. We might be sharing more. There is a definite connection between us. So destroying it that way isn't going to work, if you want me back. (If you don't want me back, then by all means.)_

_ There's a chance that if you hook the Angel up to the rift manipulator, the connection between us will create a controlled center of rift activity that would link your time and location to my time and location. BUT - and this is important, Ianto – if it looks like it will be too dangerous to let the Angel stay unfrozen for any longer than it takes for you to find it, I want you to turn it to stone. It doesn't matter what happens to me. I want you to be safe. I want you all to be safe._

_Martha's familiar with the Angels. It's a good thing we're borrowing her for a while. She'll explain to you and Gwen how they've been dealt with before. There might even be a movie in your future._

_Good luck, and be careful,_

_CJH_

- - -

Ianto met Gwen and Martha at all all-night café. He let them read the letter, each holding one side of the paper, their heads pressed together, faces grim – except for Martha who, reading the last paragraph, cracked a bit of a smile and looked up at Ianto.

He asked, "What does he mean, a movie?"

"The Easter Egg," she answered, picking up her coffee. "There are some people who know about the Angels. If we go tomorrow, they'll help us. They own a video shop in London."

"How do you know about these things?" Gwen asked.

Martha smiled into her coffee. "The Doctor and I ran into them once. Well, really, they ran into us. Sent us back to 1969 without the TARDIS, so we were stuck. The people who own the video shop, they were the ones who helped us. They sent the TARDIS back to us, using some messages we left for them."

Ianto nodded. "Do you think they'll have any idea where we can find the Angel?"

Martha shook her head. "I don't know. But Jack seems to think it's worth a try. And I wouldn't mind seeing them."

- - -

"'Sparrow and Nightingale Antiquarian Books and Rare DVDs'," Ianto read, looking at the sign over the shop. "Is there such a thing as rare DVD's?"

"Come _on_." Martha grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, Gwen following.

It was nice. Small, full of old things but with beads hanging in the windows. It was a clash, but an attractive clash. A young woman ducked through the bead curtain that hid the back room and leaned against the counter.

"Hello!" She smiled at them. "Can I help you with anything?"

Martha approached the counter. "Yes, actually! I'm-"

"Martha!" the woman suddenly cried, her eyes going huge, "You're Martha! You were with the Doctor!" She looked Martha up and down. "You've got a bit older!"

Martha laughed. "You've got a bit more pregnant!"

The woman smiled wide. "Six months. Lawrence is absolutely – oh, but you haven't met Lawrence!" She paused. "Nor me, really. Weird." She drew the word out, her eyes sparkling.

Martha looked at Ianto and Gwen. "This is Sally Sparrow. She helped the Doctor and I."

"Ianto Jones."

"Gwen Cooper. Nice to meet you."

Sally nodded to them, then asked Martha, "Is the Doctor here? Are you still travelling with him?"

Martha shook her head. "Gave that up a long time ago. We're here because there's been another attack by the Weeping Angels. Our boss, Jack. He's sort of-" She smiled. "It's hard to explain. But we need to find the Angel that sent him back and keep it from taking anyone else."

Sally's brow furrowed, her mouth pulling into a worried frown. "I haven't heard anything about it. What can I do to help?"

"Can you tell us _exactly_ what you did to stop the Angels the first time round?"

"It was hardly me," Sally said with a laugh, pushing away from the counter. "Come to the back, I'll tell you." She went through the bead curtain again, and the others followed.

The back was a bit of a mess, but Sally knew her way around it and lifted a pile of papers to reveal a loose DVD. She popped it into a mounted DVD player and started tapping a remote control, saying, "Looking back, the whole thing was brilliant. Mind, I'm permanently put off statues, me. Even those little ornaments grannies cram into cupboards." She hit a final button. "There we go."

On the screen, a familiar, thin, suited man sat down in a chair, frowned at the camera and put on his glasses. "Yup, that's me." A pause. "Yes I do."

"This was weird," Martha said in an undertone to Ianto and Gwen. "He just sat there and read out the other side of a conversation off a prompter."

"How did he get the transcript?" Ianto asked.

Martha nodded to Sally, "She gave it to us."

"Bloody time travel," Gwen muttered.

On the screen, the Doctor said, "Are you going to read out the whole thing?"

The door chime went. "Oh – back in a minute!" Sally hurried out of the room.

"I'm a time traveler. Or, I was – I'm stuck. In 1969."

A younger Martha appeared, looking very sixties. "_We're _stuck. All of space and time he promises me and now I've got a job in a shop, I've got to support him!"

The Doctor: "Martha!"

Martha: "Sorry." And she ducked out of the screen.

Ianto glanced at Martha. She had a terribly soft look in her eyes, frowning almost petulantly.

The Doctor continued. "Quite possibly. 'Fraid so. 38!"

Sally popped her head in for a moment. "The transcript's on that table, there. Bit confusing otherwise. Another minute." Then she disappeared again.

Ianto picked up a piece of paper that looked like a script and held it so that Martha and Gwen could see it, too.

"People don't understand time. It's not what you think it is."

Gwen smiled, reading down the page at Sally's reaction. "She told him, didn't she?"

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly – timey-wimey – stuff."

"Brilliant description, that," Ianto said, looking up at the screen.

"It got away from me, yeah."

Ianto coughed out a laugh.

"Well, I can hear you. Well, not hear you, exactly, but I know everything you're gonna say."

"Not terribly direct in explaining things, is he?" Gwen asked.

"You don't know the half of it," Martha muttered.

"Look to your left," he said.

Automatically, all three of them looked. At that moment, Sally came through the doorway and laughed when she saw them looking in her direction. "That happens," she said, coming in. "Sometimes it works for other conversations and things. Just a coincidence, I think."

The Doctor was pointing out toward the camera. "I've got a copy of the finished transcript, it's on my autocue. I told you, I'm a time traveler, I got it from the future."

"Oh, the amount of sleep I would have gotten after all of this if he'd just have said he got it from me," Sally sighed, dropping into a chair at a cluttered table.

"Timelines," Martha said automatically, then looked surprised. "That really is a blanket excuse, isn't it?"

The Doctor got louder. "What matters is, we can communicate. We have got big problems now. They have taken the blue box, haven't they? The angels have the phone box."

Ianto tilted his head. "That's quite cryptic."

"Creatures from another world. Only when you see them. The Lonely Assassins, they used to be called – no one quite knows where they came from, but they're as old as the universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defense system ever evolved. They're quantum locked. They don't exist when they're being observed, the moment they are seen by any other living creature they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing they literally turn to stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. And oh yes it can. That's why they cover their eyes. They're not weeping, they can't risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. The loneliest creatures in the universe. And I'm sorry. I am very, very sorry. It's up to you now. The blue box, it's my time machine. There is a world of time energy in there they can feast on forever, but the damage they could do could switch off the sun. You have got to send it back to me."

"That's it for my part," Sally said.

"And that's it, I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The Angels are coming for you, but listen, your life could depend on this. Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away and _don't blink._ Good luck."

The image froze on the screen, the Doctor looking deadly serious.

Sally hit the pause button. "There you go," she said, leaning on a table. "That's the Easter Egg. Still a total mystery to everyone but Larry and me, but that's okay. A bit of mystery is good."

Ianto looked to her. "What happened after this?"

"Ah, well. We were in this old house, Wester Drumlins, where I found the first message, when we watched the video and Larry made the transcript. The Doctor was right. The transcript stopped because the Angels came. Larry had to stare one down while I looked for a way out. We ended up in the cellar because all the doors were locked, and there was the blue box, just sitting in the middle of these three Angels. Larry's one followed us down the stairs and tried to turn the light out so we couldn't see them, but we got inside the box all right after a minute of trying. I'd found the key before. That's why they were following me in the first place. So we got inside, and this DVD in Larry's pocket started glowing, so we put it into a slot and the box – well, from the inside it wasn't a box, it was round, and _huge _but anyway – the time machine started to dissolve all around us. We thought the Doctor was just going to leave us to the Angels, but really it was a trick. When the time machine disappeared there was nothing keeping the angels from looking at each other, and they all froze in a circle around us. They can never look away from each other, so they'll never move again."

She smiled. "And that's it, really. A few months later I was still trying to figure out how he'd gotten all of his information when he and Martha here popped out of a cab in front of the shop and I came running out to talk to them. Then I realized it was me who was supposed to give it to them, and I did, and things seemed to work out fine from there."

Martha nodded. "You really saved us, then. Thanks. I never got to say 'thanks' properly for that."

Sally beamed. "You're welcome! Anything to help."

Ianto asked quietly, "Could you give us the address of that house you spoke about?"

"Sure!" Sally rummaged around for a pen and wrote the address on the back of the transcript. "Take this, too. Might come in useful."

Ianto thanked her, then looked up at the screen. Martha did, too.

At the same time, both of them said, "Can I get a copy of that?"

They looked at each other, each with confused smiles.

"Sure, just a minute-" Sally went through a few drawers before pulling out a battered Memorex burned disc. "Just the Easter Egg video, none of the stuff you have to do to find it. Easier that way." She held it out. Ianto took it.

"Right, well," Gwen said, "Thanks for the help, Sally." She smiled. "Good luck with the baby."

"Thank you! Good luck with the Angel. If you need anymore help, just call!"

"Will do," Martha said, and they went through the bead curtain and out of the front door with a chime.


	3. Chapter 3

Gwen ran her fingers over the crystal chandelier in the middle of the floor. "This place must have been lovely, before."

"It was," Martha said quietly, looking around at the ripped, faded wallpaper. "It really was."

Gwen glanced at her. "I'm going to look around." Then she left, her footsteps echoing throughout the old house.

Ianto stood silently reading the writing on the wall, now a little more aged, but still visible. "Beware the Weeping Angel. Oh, and Duck. No, really, Duck! Sally Sparrow. DUCK, NOW! Love From The Doctor (1969)."

Martha came up beside him and touched the words with the tips of her fingers. "Someone owned this place, back in 1969. Thought we were a couple of nutters when we came and asked if we could write on the wall and paper over it. He let us, though." She traced her fingers along the letters, adding quietly, "They always let us. Something about the Doctor. The way he is."

Ianto looked at her, and at that moment Gwen called from somewhere in the house, "Ianto! Martha! I've found something!"

They found her in the cellar. Her hand was still on the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and she was staring out at the center of the room. When she spoke, her voice shook a little. "_Look_ at them." She shook her head. "I don't envy that girl."

They were there in a circle, their arms outstretched and fingers interlaced, demonic faces turned toward each other. The Weeping Angels, trapped forever in stone because they had been tricked into seeing one another. Ianto walked toward them.

Jack was right. He did like them.

He reached out a hand – behind him, Martha said, "No, don't-" – and laid it on an outstretched wing. Martha concluded, "-touch." Nothing happened.

He looked back at them. "When they're like this, they can't affect anything. They're only stone."

Gwen approached and tentatively put her hand on one dull grey arm. She exhaled. "You're right." She looked at the rest of them. "They haven't moved. Look," she ran her hand down the arm toward where the stone fingers of two Angels met. When she pulled away, he hand was covered in dust. She wiped it on her jeans. "That means that the Angel that sent Jack back is a new one."

Ianto took his hand away from the Angel and looked back at Martha. "How are we going to find it? Do you think it's here?"

Martha shook her head. "I don't know. I don't think so. And Jack said that it wouldn't attack anyone else, so we can't follow reports of missing people." She held her hands up. "We might just have to wait."

Gwen blew a breath out between her teeth and moved for the stairs. "I hate the waiting." Martha followed her up.

Ianto lingered for a moment, looking closely at the face of one of the Angels, pulled into a horrible snarl. He reached his fingers out, slowly, his pulse quickening, but thought better of it and pulled away.

With a final look he turned and followed them out.

- - -

Ianto sat in the half-dark of the hub, watching a screen above a _(Owen's, it would always be Owen's) _workstation.

"People assume that time is a straight progression from cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint-"

Martha's hand fell on his shoulder, startling him out of his concentration.

She pulled her hand away. "Sorry," she said, with an apologetic smile. "Didn't mean to scare you."

Ianto shook his head. "I thought you'd gone home."

"No," she said, quietly, watching the screen play its image of the Doctor.

He watched her face, then asked softly, "Do you miss him?"

She sighed. "Sometimes. All of this is making it harder. Everything we did, coming back to me. I'm glad that I left him, but – he never quite leaves you, the Doctor. Time travel. Space. It's in you forever. I saw so many things."

Ianto was silent, looking at the screen.

"But - how are you, Ianto?"

"Me?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. I can see you're not quite - there. Sometimes. When it's quiet. Is it Jack?"

Ianto sighed, agitated. "When has it ever been anything else?"

Martha frowned, and Ianto looked chastened. "Sorry," he said, smiling very slightly. "Odd day, yeah?"

She nodded.

"It's just," he continued, "It's just that we've gotten – complicated. And we won't talk about it. I'm fine with that. I'm not a talker. Especially about-" he couldn't say it; he waved his hands helplessly. "But. Jack's worse than me. And it's impossible to tell what he's thinking or feeling, sometimes. All the time."

Martha smiled and put her hand on Ianto's shoulder. "Do you love him?"

Ianto sighed again. "_Yes._"

Martha looked delighted. "Then tell him!"

Ianto turned to look at her squarely. "If there was a word more negative than 'no', I would be using it right now."

"Why?"

"Because it's _Jack_," Ianto said, as if that was explanation enough. "_Jack,_ Martha."

"Well, why-"

"I'm done talking about it." He stood up. "We have to figure out how to find the Angel. Get him back. That's all that matters." He started to walk away.

Martha watched him. "I was thinking," she said, and he stopped and look back at her. "Maybe we should go to the house that Jack disappeared in."

"Gwen's gone home. Will we be all right on our own?"

"We'll be fine. It might be worth a shot."

Ianto thought for a moment, looking at Martha.

"All right," he said. "I'll bring the car round."

- - -

"Jack does find the nicest places," Ianto said, stepping around some unidentifiable mass on the floor and shining his torchlight on the crumbling walls. It was a wreck.

"Do you think the Angels are attracted to old places like this?" Martha asked, following him, looking in the opposite direction.

"Might be." He peeked around a corner into a room, the light ahead of him, and finding nothing there, entered slowly. There was a mossy old table in the middle of the room, broken dishes on the floor. Ianto's foot hit something, and he shone the light down at it.

It was Jack's torch.

He reached down and picked it up, then looked around the room. He called back to Martha. "I think this is where the Angel found him."

She walked over, thick heels making dull sounds on the sodden floorboards. (Ianto thought then, as he always did, that Martha did not make good choices in footwear when going out to investigate.) He showed her the torch.

"Sure it's Jack's?" she asked.

He turned it over and showed her the Torchwood "T" on the bottom.

She looked at him with a smirk. "Do you guys mark everything with that?"

He glanced at her. "I haven't had it tattooed. Yet." He turned. "Come on. There's nothing here. It was worth a try."

The moved out of the room, Martha stifling a yawn with her hand.

Watching their retreat, something breathed. Something smiled.

- - -

When Ianto opened his front door he almost stepped on a familiar small white object sitting on his doormat. Another letter? He reached down and turned it over. Torchwood "T". Thinking of Martha, he smiled and pulled the flap open and extracted the pages inside. More, this time. He shook them open and began to read.

As he did, the smile fell from his face.


	4. Chapter 4

_14 October 1913_

_Senghenydd, Glamorgan, Wales_

_Ianto,_

_No matter where – when - I am, these horrible things happen. I forgot the date today. That was all it took. Just forgetting. It's so easy to forget things now, after all of this time. All of this crossing back and forth through my own timeline. I used to think that time travel was everything. Now, it just makes me tired._

_Today, a coal mine exploded in Senghenydd. I was there. Just passing by. Maybe somewhere I knew what was going to happen. Maybe I've seen enough newspapers, enough memorials, to subconsciously know every tragedy in the 20__th__ century. I tried to help them. I went into the flames and tried to save someone, anyone. But the ones who were going to escape had already escaped, and the rest – 439 men, some of them really only children – were burned alive. _

_I died. Then I woke up._

_Dying is easy. Dying is natural. It feels right. Every time, it feels right. It's the waking up that's hard. That's the part that's painful. And waking up to my skin growing back across my slowly reforming muscle after being roasted inside of a burning mine –_

_Ianto, I'm so tired. I'm tired of surviving while everything and everyone around me dies. Suzie died. Twice. Owen died – twice. Toshiko. Who's next? Gwen, Martha?_

_I could lose you tomorrow. You could already be gone. This letter could be sitting on your doormat while they bury you. Someone might find it when they come to clean out your flat. And if you are gone, then I can never follow you. _

_I could be writing this to you and never see you again._

_It's hard for me to say how much that scares me. How much it scares me that you are so fragile – I'm sorry, but to me, you are. As a man, as an employee, you are remarkably resilient. But as someone I care about, you are so, so fragile. You could break so easily, right in front of me, while I can do nothing but watch. _

_I don't know yet, how this is going to turn out. Whether or not the plan will work. But I want you to swear – whisper it to yourself right now, reading this – swear that you won't put yourself at risk. It isn't worth it to get me back. Because if I come back to find that you've been sent somewhere by the Angel, I swear to you that I will rip through Time itself to find you again. I will end everything to bring you home._

_CJH_

_---_

Ianto woke to an overcast dawn. The sheets were tangled and thrown across the bed. He had not slept well.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. They shook. Fatigue, nerves. A weight pressed down against his chest. He pushed himself off of the bed, went to his closet. Work would come early today. He knew he wouldn't sleep any more.

Fifteen minutes later he locked the front door behind him and set out into the fog. It pressed itself around him, damp and cloying, making it almost difficult to breathe. The only break in the silence was the beat of his footsteps on the road. Everything was still. Everything was chill and grey.

Jack's letter. Ianto couldn't put it out of his mind. It haunted him. But he could never make that kind of promise, heard or unheard. He could never swear to save himself over Jack – over anyone. But Jack especially. And Jack knew that. But still, he asked.

Still, at his sides, Ianto's hands shook.

He wanted to curl up in a hole somewhere and stick his fingers in his ears and pretend that Torchwood had never happened to him. He knew that the thought was almost weakness personified, but he felt suddenly that the morning warranted it, the quiet and the fog buffering him from real things. Hard things.

The feeling of being watched.

He spun. There was nothing. Nothing visible. The fog seemed to thicken, to press closer, and through it he could hardly see ten feet in front of him.

Panic gripped his chest.

"Who's there?" he shouted out at nothing, shattering the silence.

There was no answer.

He turned forward again. There was a noise. Quickly, he looked.

At the center of the road, about twenty feet away, through a slowly abating patch of fog Ianto could see the tall stone silhouette of a Weeping Angel. His breath caught in his throat.

(_Don't blink. Blink and you're dead.)_

He was fucked.

Keeping his eyes trained on the form in the fog, Ianto dug in his pocket for his phone and held the number 3 without looking. He raised it to his ear.

Gwen answered sleepily on the second ring, "Ianto? What is it?"

"I found the Angel," he said, quietly, as though he might startle it, but truly it was to keep his fear out of his voice. If Gwen caught his hysteria-

"Where?" she asked quickly. He could hear her fumbling around on the other end, probably pulling on clothes.

"The road my flat is on. Halfway to the Plass."

"Do you know where it is right now?"

"I'm looking at it."

There was silence on the other end as the gravity of the situation sank in.

"I'll be there in five minutes. Try not to blink." There was a click as she hung up.

Try not to blink for five minutes?

Ianto's eyes were already beginning to water as he lowered his phone. The fog shifted more, and he could see it clearly. Stone curls fell to its hunched shoulders and around its lifted hands, which hid its face in an expression of supreme sorrow. It was beautiful. The most abandoned and lonely thing that Ianto had ever seen.

His eyes burned.

He blinked.

And it was five feet away, and Ianto could make out every detail, every fold in its dress, every separate curl, the space between its fingers, still hiding its face.

His heart pounded out a rhythm unfamiliar and horrible. He could not last five minutes. It was too fast.

He thumbed a button on the side of his phone and held it up to the Angel.

"This," he said, keeping his voice measured, although there was a slight tremble, "is an electronic eye. Even if I'm not watching you, it is. It will know when you move." The screen on his phone reflected the Angel in grainy digital quality. Ianto had no idea if this would work, but there was no other chance.

He ran.

He ran faster than he ever had in his life, his phone held backwards over his shoulder, filming everything that happened behind him as he went. He just needed to get to Roald Dahl Plass. There would be people there. Other people would see it. He had no idea why the camera thing was working, it was total crap, but it was enough, enough time to-

He reached the Plass, threw himself into the middle of a group of people (met with odd looks and a few gasps of surprise) and stared around.

The Angel was nowhere to be seen.

Hands vibrating so fast that they almost made a little humming noise, Ianto switched off the camera on his phone and stuck it into his pocket, then walked across the Plass toward the Tourist Center.

Martha was in the hub already, and before Ianto could explain what happened she made him sit down on the couch and drink a cup of tea. He was pale and sweat gleamed from his brow, his breath still coming in little gasps as he struggled to get ahold of himself.

Gwen charged into the hub two minutes after Ianto, and when she set eyes on him she ran and threw her arms around his neck. "I thought you'd been taken! Oh, I'm so glad that you're all right."

Martha sat down on the coffee table across from Ianto. "How'd you get away from it?"

"Tricked it," he said, putting his tea down as Gwen sat on the couch next to him. "Not the smartest creatures, right? The Doctor tricked them. So I told it that my phone's camera was an electronic eye, watching it, even if I wasn't looking. And I ran."

Martha's eyebrows lowered. "That wouldn't work. Doesn't someone have to be physically looking at it? Some living thing?"

Ianto shrugged. "By the time I turned round it was gone, so obviously cameras don't actually work. But it bought me the time to get to other people."

It was Gwen's turn to look perplexed. "But I came down that road only about a minute after you'd gone. There was still no one there. Why didn't it try to attack me?"

"And I came in alone this morning," Martha added. "I didn't see anything."

Ianto was quiet for a moment.

"I suppose that it might be after me."

"But why? Jack said that it wouldn't be attacking anyone else."

Ianto shrugged again. "Who knows?" He fell back against the sofa, exhausted. "I'm tired of thinking about this." He closed his eyes.

Gwen stood up. "Well, it can't get in the hub. No matter how fast it is, it can't bypass the security system. So we're safe here."

"We're going to have to leave eventually," Martha said. "We need to come up with a way to trap it."

Ianto sat silently with his eyes still closed for an eternal moment. Then he said, "Bait."

Martha looked at him sharply. "What?"

"I'm bait. If it wants me, we can use that. Use me as bait and trap it when it comes for me."

"No," said Martha and Gwen together in the same firm tone.

"It's the only sure way we have of catching it," he protested. "It'll come for me no matter what."

"Jack said-"

"It doesn't matter what Jack said!" Ianto sat forward suddenly, his voice raising. "This is the only way we have." He looked them both in the eye, going slowly from one to the other. "It doesn't matter what happens to me. We have to get him back. You know we have to get him back."

Martha's eyes dropped first, then Gwen's. They sat there in uneasy silence, not looking at each other. They listened to the sounds of the early-morning hub. They were each thinking of the same terrible things.


	5. Chapter 5

Ianto couldn't watch the footage captured on his mobile. He tried. It made him turn his head and gag. When Gwen took it from him to see, she dropped it and stepped away, wiping her hands on her jacket, her lips pulled thin and tight against her teeth. When Martha reached for it, Gwen put a up hand to stop her.

"No," she said, quietly. "Leave it."

The Angel did not move like any creature they had ever seen before. It didn't move like any creature should be able to move. The way that Sally and Lawrence had seen them moving was impeded by the stuttering of the cellar light. But completely uninhibited, completely unseen, the Angel – Ianto couldn't describe the movement to himself. There were no words. But the thought of it turned his stomach, and as he uploaded the footage to the archives he had to keep his eyes on his hands at the keyboard. Because if he were to see any more of it, he knew he would never dream about anything else for the rest of his life.

- - -

They spent the rest of the day wading through the archives, pulling up every instance of a person being transported through time, every sighting of a Weeping Angel. Every bit of information would help them to calibrate the rift manipulator – they would still be flying blind, but not completely blind. One blind eye, one with cataracts.

Wester Drumlins had a fascinating history of disappearances before 2007 – vehicles, some still running, found on the property, being kept by the local police, whole families vanished. This did nothing to ease Ianto's fears.

By the time they dropped him at his door that evening, Ianto was having difficulty keeping himself under control. His key rattled and scratched around the door lock. He heard Gwen drive away, to circle the block and park across the street. A stakeout. Scream if something kills you.

He laughed a trifle hysterically at that and the key finally slid home. He turned it and opened the door.

Every light in the flat was off.

His heart pounded against the wall of his chest like it wanted to escape the cage of his ribs. His nostrils flared with his terrified breaths as he slowly slid a hand along the wall for the hall light. It took him a minute to find it, and the whole time the darkness seemed to stare back at him.

When the light flicked on, he heard a short beep behind him and knew that Gwen and Martha were there now, outside. He stepped into the flat and closed the door. He didn't want them to see how frightened he was. It was stupid, he knew. He edged along the hall until the reach of the light ended and wrapped his hand around the corner for the kitchen light.

Click.

There was nothing out of place. Everything was as neat as he had left it that morning. It made him feel better, the familiar neatness. The total pitch darkness outside of the back windows made his insides revolt and rise as though to strangle him, but the chairs at his table were pushed in properly, and that was all right.

He let out a shaking breath he did not know he had been holding and went to fill his kettle. What he actually needed was a drink, something to settle his nerves, but there was nothing in his flat. So, tea. The familiar preparations of making a cup of tea.

How long, he wondered, would it be before the Angel came for him? Were they even right in thinking that it was him it was after? Could it be attacking Martha and Gwen right now? Waiting for the water to boil, Ianto went to the front room windows and looked out through the blinds.

No, they were there. Heads ducked in conversation.

- - -

"They're like Romeo and Juliet," Gwen said, peering through the window at the outside of Ianto's flat.

Martha almost choked on the coffee she was drinking. "_Pardon?_" she asked, incredulously, when she had recovered.

"Yeah," Gwen said slowly, still looking out of the window. "They live like their lives are tragic dramas." She looked at Martha. "You know what I mean. Jack tells Ianto not to get himself hurt, and what does Ianto do? Throw himself in with something horrible that we don't understand."

Martha grinned, thinking about it. "I can see it. Both of them wanting to play the willing sacrifice."

Gwen settled back against the headrest. "It means that they care about each other."

Martha nodded. Then flashed a smile.

"Which one's Juliet, though?"

Gwen laughed.

- - -

There was a loud click from the kitchen as the kettle switched itself off, and Ianto returned to it. He only looked at it. He didn't want tea. He wanted to stand with his back against the windows and stare as hard as he could at the light over his counter. Every muscle in his body was tensed, every sense open and seeking some sign of intrusion. His hypervigilance was quickly draining him, but he couldn't stop, because any second it could come for him and touch him and send him back and he didn't know how Jack dealt with that so easily, being hurled around time.

He gripped the edge of the counter and there was a thud upstairs.

He spun.

Nothing.

He blinked.

It was there.

Teeth bared in a hateful snarl, hands raised like claws, wings spread, leaning toward him with something akin to lust in its stone eyes. Ianto jumped back against the counter and pressed the panic button in his pocket.

He kept his eyes wide open and trained on the Angel's face, his breath so shallow he was barely breathing at all.

The front door crashed open.

The lights cut out.

There was a shout and one torch caught the tip of a wing, the other, two outstretched hands, and below them Ianto huddled on the floor with his arms over his head, backed against the cabinets.

When he wasn't suddenly in 1940, Ianto glanced up to see Gwen and Martha standing in the entrance to his kitchen, their torches trained on the Angel.

Martha asked, her eyes not moving from it, "Do you always fall down when you're scared?"

Ianto pushed himself out from under the Angel and stood up, pulling his suit straight. "No." He went to a drawer and searched around until he found a torch, then turned it on. "I was trying to get away from it."

"You're like one of those fainting goats." He could hear Gwen's sardonic smile in her voice.

"Hello, dangerous monster in my kitchen, can you mock me a bit later?"

"Right," Martha said, stepping forward a little. "All of us keep our eyes on it. Always say when you're looking away. Ianto'll drive us back to the hub, Gwen and I will watch it."

"Okay," Ianto said, shining his light up and down the tall stone form. "How do we get it to the SUV?"

There was silence.

"Brilliant bunch of operatives we are." Ianto started to move around the Angel in a wide circle. "Keep your eyes on it. I'll be right back."

Two minutes later they were rolling it down Ianto's hardwood hallway floor on the mechanic's dolly from the back of the SUV.

Five minutes after that, the Angel loaded into the back and Martha and Gwen sitting on either side of it, Ianto hit the gas and didn't let up.

- - -

Ianto and Martha attached the Angel to the rift manipulator using leads from the medical bay and the thick wires beneath the metal floor grating while Gwen stood typing at a workstation. They all announced when they were going to blink. It would have become tiresome if they weren't all profoundly terrified.

When the connection was finished, Ianto and Martha stepped quickly away from the Angel. Touching it felt wrong. Nothing so terrible should ever be touched. The air around it shimmered with malice, and even under the lights of the hub it was horrifying.

"Right," said Gwen, her finger on the Enter key. "Are we ready?"

"Ready."

"Ready."

Gwen took a breath and hit the button.

The rift manipulator groaned and sang in mechanical voices and there was a blood-curdling shriek that vibrated the stone of the Angel. And then, light. A jagged tear of light in the middle of the hub. And the shrieking and the grinding got louder and louder.

They waited, Martha and Gwen gripping their ears against the noise. Nothing happened. Jack didn't appear.

They hadn't thought of this.

Ianto stepped forward – behind him Martha called, "Ianto, no!" He turned back to her and Gwen.

"Keep looking at the Angel!" He was shouting above the cacophony of the rift opening. "Don't take your eyes off of it!"

Then he turned back to the opening.

It fluttered at its edges, like feathers caught in a breeze. The purest white he had ever seen. He approached it slowly, feeling a kind of wind come through it, blowing his coat and tie back behind him, warm, like a sigh.

He reached out his hand.

He heard them shouting behind him, but not the words. They were lost in noise. He reached. His hand was surrounded in white. His arm.

He closed his eyes and reached further, his upper body leaning into the rift opening. The feeling was…

Unbearable, beautiful lightness.

He felt the truth: that all of his atoms were held together by happenstance, a happy accident, and in the warm embrace of the rift he felt as though they could shake apart and float free of each other, but maintain his consciousness.

He felt more at peace than he ever had in his entire life.

Into the light, into the warm, he whispered, "Please."

"Jack. Please."

And then a hand closed over his own.

And back in the hub, a smaller hand grabbed the one that hung free. And pulled.

And Ianto pulled, as hard as he could, pulled the hand that grabbed his in the rift. And they went flying back, onto the floor.

A thousand things happened at once.

The Weeping Angel exploded with a final, earsplitting shriek.

The rift opening winked out of existence.

The rift manipulator sent sparks flying into the air and quit its noise.

Gwen cursed softly on the floor, rubbing her head.

And Ianto rolled the body on top of his over and stared down in shock.

"Jack," he breathed.

Jack grinned up at him. "Happy to see me?"

Ianto kissed him like he would never pull away, gripping him around the shoulders and holding as tightly as he could.

- - -

Martha was stitching sutures into the back of Gwen's scalp, where she'd hit her head falling after pulling Ianto back into the hub. Jack was standing with his back to the medical bay wall and his arms crossed, watching her work. Ianto was standing opposite him with his hands in his pockets, trying not to stare at him, trying to blink normally, trying not to feel as though Jack would disappear if he closed his eyes for too long.

They were all fine. All fine.

Jack was explaining what happened.

"When I came back through, the time energy that the Angel absorbed complicated itself. It was too much. Their victims aren't supposed to be able to travel back." He cast a grin at Ianto. "So it exploded. When it did, the connection to the rift manipulator broke, which closed the rift opening."

Ianto shifted against the wall. "Is it still a threat?"

"Yes," Jack said, to his surprise. "You never know with these things. There still might be enough of it left to cause some damage. We'll have to gather up the pieces and take it somewhere safe."

Ianto nodded and pushed himself away from the wall. "I'll get a broom." He started up the stairs.

Martha set down her suture needle, finished. "I'll help," she said.

Jack stepped forward and shook his head. "No. If Gwen has a concussion, I want you to stay with her. Take her home. Rhys is off on a work trip, right?" He put a hand on Gwen's shoulder as he asked her the question.

Gwen nodded, looking exhausted.

Jack looked at Martha. "Okay?"

Martha nodded.

Jack looked at Ianto, who had stopped on the stairs. "Ianto and I will take care of it." He smiled.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **As promised, the Epilogue has been posted at the same time as this final chapter._


	6. Epilogue

Wester Drumlins was silent at that time of night. Even the wind kept well away. But there was no malice there, now. Ianto could only feel a kind of sadness, a loneliness, absorbed into its tattered walls.

Jack set the pieces of the Angel on a pedestal he'd brought in from the garden. It was placed at the very center of the other Angels. Right in their line of sight.

"They'll never move again," Ianto said quietly, standing off to the side in the dark cellar.

Jack looked at him. He nodded.

They looked at each other for a long, long moment.

Ianto could feel his face turning red with the effort of keeping himself contained; tears stung at the corners of his eyes. He couldn't keep the quiet act.

"_Jack_," he broke.

Jack opened his arms.

Ianto dove into them, gripping Jack's shirt, burying his head in Jack's chest. Jack's arms wrapped around Ianto's shoulders and pulled him closer, tight against him, his lips pressed against Ianto's hair. Ianto breathed against him, "You're here, you're here," trying to keep himself from crying and not being able to help it.

He felt a few wet drops against his scalp and he wrapped his arms around Jack's middle, holding on as tight as he could manage.

It felt like an eternity before they released each other. Jack stepped away and wiped his eyes, smiling through tears. "You got me back," he said.

Ianto was wiping his own tears away. "I had to," he said. "I need you."

Jack reached out and put his hand on Ianto's cheek, rubbing his thumb across his cheekbone. He kissed him, softly, taking his hand.

"Come on," he said, quiet. "Let's go back."

At the bottom of the stairs, Ianto stopped. Jack looked down at him from the second step. "What's wrong?"

Ianto looked up at him. "The Angel," he said, thinking. "You said it wouldn't attack anyone. But it went for me. Why?"

Jack smiled. "I told you. The Angel and I were connected. It wanted what I wanted." He held out his hand again. "Come on."

Ianto took it.

They left the house to its silence.

* * *

_**Author's Note:** Thank you so much to every who read this and enjoyed it! Thank you especially to Flinch-Hayward, marajade963, katwinchester, CantThinkaNuffin and jinx1995 for all of your reviews! To everyone else who reviewed as this was ongoing, you, too, are awesome, and kept up my morale. I appreciate it. I hope you all liked it._


End file.
